Climate, Nobel and Al Gore

N. R. KRISHNAN

Nobel awards for Peace can often be contentious. But not so this year. Barring a few diehard critics who question the phenomenon of global warming itself, the world has welcomed the 2007 award to Al Gore, former US Vice-President and a renowned green crusader, and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the bookies’ favourites. Gore’s Oscar winning documentary film An Invisible Truth on the causes of global warming and its po ssible devastating impact on life on this planet virtually turned the lukewarm concern over rise in global temperatures into a groundswell of support for action to mitigate it.

The scientific basis for Gore’s film was provided by the assessment reports of the IPCC released periodically since 1990. It is a matter of honour and pride for India that an Indian, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, of the New Delhi-based Tata Environment Research Institute, has been heading the IPCC for the last many years, guiding the work of hundreds of scientists, technologists and economists and forging political consensus among statesmen and governments on the urgent need to combat the problem.

Clear message

The Nobel winners’ message is clear. Almost 90 per cent of the observed rise of 0.67º Celsius in global temperatures (with a variation of 0.2º on either side) in the last 100 years is due to anthropogenic reasons. This temperature rise is seen to be in step with the increase in atmospheric concentrations of the so-called Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) released by human activities such as burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) for energy and transportation and farming to raise cereal crops and cattle.

Burning of fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide, the most abundant GHG in the atmosphere while paddy cultivation, anaerobic digestion of organic matter at the bottom of large reservoirs of water and enteric fermentation in cattle emit methane, a more potent but less abundant GHG. There are other GHGs too. Even the permissible HCFCs (hydrochlorofluorocarbons) and HFCs (hydrofluorocarbons) used in refrigeration and air-conditioning have a global warming potential.

IPCC and Gore caution that as the levels of GHG concentrations in the atmosphere climb to more than 450 ppm (parts per million) — a distinct possibility according to the most conservative estimates — temperatures may go up by 2º Celsius, a rise large enough to cause severe climate changes. Further rises may lead to changes well-nigh irreversible with disastrous consequences.

Large parts of the Arctic and the Antarctic will melt elevating sea levels all over the globe and inundating coastal lands, hurricanes may increase in intensity, rainfall may become erratic leading to water scarcity and vector borne diseases such as malaria and dengue may wreak a heavy toll of human lives. It, therefore, comes as little comfort that the current reported GHG level is 430 ppm and it is increasing at the rate of 2 ppm each year.

Pentagon report

How far global warming and climate change may affect world peace has been studied by the Pentagon. Though exaggerated in its findings, the Pentagon report does offer an insight into what a warmer future may hold for us. War and famine brought about by dwindling water resources, exodus of vast populations — affected by hunger, pestilence, thirst and floods — to safer areas across national boundaries, and nuclear arms proliferation under the guise of national security are foreseen as not unlikely consequences in the coming decades.

The Sahel region of Africa is already witnessing water wars and submergence under rising sea levels is a reality in the Pacific islands of Tuvalu and Kiribati. The melting Arctic sea with prospects of oil and gas underneath is leading to a rash of territorial claims. The award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Gore and the IPCC is, therefore, timely.

Against the background of this latest development on the climate front, it is engaging to speculate on the outcome of the Bali concourse slated for December this year. Recent gatherings had brought little cheer for those concerned about the future of the Kyoto Protocol whose first assessment period expires in 2012.

Kyoto Protocol

The champions of the Protocol desire to have the post-2012 climate control regime put in place well before that year. They expect Bali to elicit time-bound commitments from China, India and Brazil to bring down their GHG emissions and they may even go the extra mile to bring to bear universal pressure upon these three countries to do so.

Between now and December there is time to introspect on why the Kyoto targets for effecting GHG reductions have more or less failed. The Executive Director of the secretariat of the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) has admitted to the failure. Maybe the targets had been set too high bringing with them fears of economic stagnation.

The sheer non-availability of technologies to cut emissions in use of conventional fuels, the inadequacy of alternative energy sources to fill the void that would be created by limiting the use of conventional fuels or plain cussedness of an oil-holic world to change could be equally valid reasons.

It’s time the proponents of GHG reductions realised that global warming spread over a century cannot be reversed as easily as the stitching back of the ozone layer under the Montreal Protocol. One is constrained to refer to the Montreal Protocol as it is often held out as a model for Kyoto to follow. Montreal was a vastly simpler matter. The hole in the ozone layer would patch itself back given the switchover to ozone-friendly substitutes and time. The resources needed to be deployed to tackle the ozone problem were far less compared to the resources that have to be committed to arrest global warming. No economy was disrupted by Montreal. Money and technology were readily available to implement it. No sacrifice of lifestyles was called for. With the UNFCCC and Kyoto the situation is quite different.

Strategy for China, India

Any attempt to bring them under a regime of mandatory cuts in their GHG emissions in a manner similar to that applicable to the Annex-I countries in the Kyoto Protocol is bound to be resisted by China and India. However, since these two countries do run up huge bills on their oil and gas imports, they would be keen to keep these bills to the minimum. Equally important would be their concern to develop clean energy sources and reduce the incidence of pollution arising out of burning coal. Further, demand side management of energy through a variety of ways and increasing energy efficiency in all sectors of their economies through a system of incentives and disincentives are much less painful than arbitrary cuts on energy consumption and, hence, on GHG emissions.

China and India may do well to place before the world community their strategies and Plans of Action to reduce their GHG intensities of growth in both qualitative and quantitative terms. That would be far less galling to them than being subjected to unrealistic cuts in their GHG emissions, a strategy that has failed to deliver results with the Annex-I countries under the Kyoto regime. China and India have already furnished to the UNFCCC secretariat their national inventories of sources and estimates of GHG emissions. What they need to do now is only a logical extension of that exercise.

Earlier this year word went around that Mr Gore may pay a visit to India. With the Nobel under his belt he may do that soon. The visit may even encourage him to produce a sequel to An Invisible Truth on what countries like India can and cannot be expected to do.

(The author is a former Secretary, Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India.)